7/7

As with the attack on the twin towers, the victims of the indiscriminate 7/7 bombings in London were from varied backgrounds; and from different faiths. There were also foreigners affected by the bombs: Israeli, Polish, Turkish, French and Australian.

Walking through London streets and not finding anyone who speaks English enough to give me directions to a street I'm looking for.  That's a vivid memory for me.  In fact, the ones I asked looked frightened and suspicious and quickly edged away from me as if I was an immigration official checking out their visas.  But that's only my imagined impression; and it was at least 20-years ago.  But that's how it is in London.  It's a cosmopolitan city and all types of people live there, as if they are going to find happiness somewhere in the vastness of it all.  "It'll break you like a twig," I was told by an African in a car I'd hitched a lift in, when you could hitch a lift in the middle of London.

But things changed after 7/7 when it became clear that the bombers were Muslims, OK that's not surprising, but that they were British and their connection with war zones must have been tenuous.

Now we have to separate in our minds Islam from Islamic extremists.  Instead of hatred of Muslims, the opposite happened and people began to understand that, in most families, there is a distance between everyday Islam and the bile of the bombers.

The first reaction after the bombing had to be ugly:  "Who are these Muslims to come here, live in a country where they're allowed the freedom to express their views, and rail against our freedoms so violently?"  Of course, this led immediately to a rise in hate crimes against foreigners with darker skins.  Things returned to normal within a month, helped by the denial that the bombers' did not represent Islam, not mainly by the Muslims themselves, but rather by the media, the politicians and the police.

The law-enforcers were out in ... well, force.  Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London at the time, was one of the first to state that reprisals would be dealt with severely.  He was right.  The people who carried out the acts were murderers and most probably brainwashed.  Who in their right mind would opt to kill themselves and innocent  members of the public for a place in paradise? 

In fact, the people were not divided by terrorism, seeing it for what it is, a delusion of hatred for a western way of living wherein, ironically,  the terrorists lived and benefited from.

So, in a spirit of tolerance and forgiveness, though probably not by all of the relatives of the victims nor the public, society was able to show that they were not at the same level as the perpetrators.  

This has to be our reaction if we are to live securely in peace.